Mermaid Kitchen: Oatmeal and Raisin Cookies

I love a good cookie. Millie's Cookies were always a treat, anyone remember when Iceland used to sell Millie's Cookie Dough? My absolute favourite cookie is white chocolate and raspberry. But as a "pretending to be vaguely healthy lunchbox snack", they aren't my best option. A cookie which is firmly in my top five, however, is the oatmeal and raisin cookie. Now that does fall into "pretending to be vaguely healthy lunchbox snack" category. Well, more so than white chocolate cookies anyway.

I got the recipe from Live Well, Bake Often. 

INGREDIENTS

• 125g Plain flour
• 1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp Bicarb of soda
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 115g Butter
• 100g Brown sugar
• 50g Granulated sugar (I used caster sugar)
• 1 Large egg
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 150g Rolled oats
• 150g Raisins

METHOD

1. Pre-heat your oven to 175C/350F and line your baking trays with baking sheets.*
2. Mix the flour, cinnamon, bicarb, and salt into a bowl and set aside.
3. In a new, larger bowl, cream the butter and sugars together. I use an electric hand whisk, the recipe suggests a Kenwood mixer, or you could even do it by hand.
4. Once combined, add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined again.
5. Add the dry mix into the butter mix bowl and stir slowly.
6. Once a cookie batter has formed, add the raisins and oats. Stir until fully mixed in.
7. OPTIONAL: Cover and cool in a fridge for 30 minutes. This helps the cookies hold their shape. I have yet to do this step, I'm a "I want my cookies now" sort of girl.
8. Scoop even sized blobs onto your baking trays. Try and space them evenly, as they will spread when cooking. (But, then again, the giant mega merged cookie...)
9. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until they are golden brown around the edges.
10. Cool on a wire rack.
11. Onnomnomnom. Or the grown up option, store in an air tight container.

*If you include the 30 min refridgeration, do this step when you are ready to cook.

HOW DID IT GO?

I have done this recipe a few times and it has yet to fail me. They have a good cookie consistency, taste great, and keep well. It has a good ratio of oats, raisins, and cookie - eat bite is interesting. Because boring bites are the worst. (Anyone else save the biggest cluster of chocolate or raisins til the last bite? Just me?)

I have actually tried a couple oatmeal and raisin cookie recipes. The first one involved soaking the raisins and were weirdly cakey. They didn't taste horrible, but I would not have called them a cookie. The recipe from Live Well, Bake Often is much better. And less of a faff - soaking raisins? They are a dried fruit, why do they need soaking?!

WHAT CAN I DO TO VARY THEM?

Read: Attempt to make them healthier.

Well, on the straight up variation, I am looking forward to adding craisins into the mix and experimenting with other fruits. As for making them healthier? Well, I know the worst bits of this are the butter and sugar. There isn't massive amounts of either in this recipe (unlike the 500g of sugar in the brownie recipe). I already use baking butter which is vegan, lower in fats, and all those good things. As for the sugar, I guess I could try subbing in honey instead of the 50g of granulated sugar. This would make them much stickier so I would probably have to increase the flour. 

In any case, I will make these again so I can have a go!

HOW DO YOU STORE RECIPES?

I get a lot of recipes online. BBC Good Food and Jamie Oliver are favourites in this household, which are usually easy to re-find when googling. But the obscure blog finds are less so. Some I have written up, but the cake section of my book is already full. My mum always had a box of alphabetised cue cards which had the reference to which cookbook she used for that particular food. Ideally, I would want one of those. But I am also trying out an app called Cook's Memory, which is basically a digital version of that. 

I'm not sure I like it. When you store URLs to the recipes, you can't just click it and follow the link. You have to go through the fiddly process of copy pasting the link, which ipads do not make easy. So what do you use? Is Cook's Memory actually quite good and I just have to perservere? Is there a better one? Or should I just invest in the box of cue cards? (I mean, I do love stationery.)

Also, more cake related: What's your favourite cookie? What do you do to make treats healthier? Know any good cookie recipes?

Listening to: Imagine Dragons